When I talk with other artists, one thing people seem interested in is my experience transitioning from being a traditional artist to working digitally, and any tips I might have for other who also want to make the switch. The most important thing to remember for artists who want to go digital is that you are switching your medium, and just like if you were to decide to transition from watercolor to sculpted clay, there is going to be a learning curve. This post covers the basics that traditional artists who are considering transitioning to a digital medium should know.

Why Go Digital?

– Attracting new clients. There are some clients who specifically want artwork layered. This is only possible in digital programs.

– Evolving your style. As with any new medium, going digital opens up the opportunity to use new techniques and tools to create a new style and take your artwork in a new direction.

– Changing your work process. When I painted with watercolors, it was important that colors be applied in a certain way at a certain time, and so I needed a large block of time in which to work. When I became a working mother with a baby, I hardly ever had a few hours straight to paint. Going digital allowed me to work in smaller blocks of time – 10 minutes, 30 minutes….whatever the baby would give me. I could work, save the file, and then come back to the piece at the next available opportunity. There is also something to be said for not having to use up valuable time stretching paper or color-correcting scanned artwork.

The Tools

– Pick your pen & paper. While it is possible to illustrate with a mouse or trackball, the majority of digital artists prefer to use a tablet and stylus. There are two general varieties. Tablets like the Wacom Intuos are like a mousepad that sits in your lap. As you move the stylus across the pressure-sensitive pad, the cursor will draw corresponding marks on your main monitor. This is an affordable option for those who want to try their hand at digital art to see if the medium is a good fit for their art. These types of tablets are also nice for artist who may want to work primarily traditionally, but want to make edits/touch ups to their artwork digitally before sending to a client. There are also tablets that allow the artist to draw directly on the monitor/screen. Ipads and similar tablets can be used in this way, but the most elite option for this type of tablet is the Wacom Cintiq. This tablet, though expensive, is a highly pressure-sensitive monitor that sits in your lap or on the desk, allowing the artist to paint directly onto the screen in a very natural manner. For those who want a more mobile option, Wacom released it’s Companion model last year, which is a combination Cintiq-laptop.

– Pick your program. There are lots of programs out there to use for digital art, but the most popular are Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, and Corel Painter. Illustrator specializes in creating vecctor artwork, which is typically flat or gradated color, very graphic looking, and capable of being up or down dramatically without affecting image clarity. Painter is a tool for those who want to create realistic painterly illustrations that mimic oil paints, chalk, pastels and other traditional media. Photoshop allows for painting with a variety of brushes for different effects as well as image/photo editing capabilities.

Time to Learn

Traditional artists, particularly those not accustomed to scanning their own artwork, may find that they need to brush up on some technical knowledge. For example, digital artists must know what file format the final images should be delivered in. It is common for clients to want CMYK (color profile) 300 DPI (resolution) Tiff (file format) files. However, some clients may have other preferences, and the digital artist should know how to set up their image to reflect these preferences before they start painting. Digital artists also know that the colors on their monitor may not be trustworthy for print-correct-colors. It is helpful to preview your artwork on a variety of monitors to look for any colors or values that are not reading correctly, or to compare the colors on your monitor to a Pantone color swatch book. The digital artist must also understand file size, and be able to store and deliver large files in a way that is not inconvenient to the client. It is not uncommon for a layered working Photoshop file to be over 300 MB in size. Most email inbox can only take up to 100 MB total, so email is not a good way to deliver many 300 MB files to a client. Luckily, there are lots of online file sharing services, such as Dropbox, that can help the digital artist get his/her artwork to the client. Some of these services are free, and some are not. Other artists have personal FTP sites related to their personal websites to deliver files to a client. Before promising digital art to a client, it is important to understand file formats and specifications, and to have a reliable method for artwork delivery.

Time to Explore

As with any new medium, an artist cannot master it overnight. Some techniques that worked for the artist traditionally will carry over to the computer environment easily, and some will not. And just like every oil painter works differently to create the style that he/she wants, the same is true for digital artist. Every digital art program has brushes and settings that can be used to achieve different looks, and it will take time for the new digital artist to find the tools and techniques that are right for his/her own artistic method. After talking to a variety of artists who made the switch, you can expect about 6 months of practice and exploration before finding your digital style and being proficient enough at it to execute an illustration project on a deadline. Youtube has lots of great videos of artists working digitally and sharing their work method. These resources can be great sources of inspiration for those who need a little help learning the many techniques available for constructing digital art.

Time to Change?

While many new digital artists try to identify techniques and tools that will allow them to duplicate their traditional style on the computer screen, it can be an unexpected pleasure to find that changing mediums can also change and evolve your illustration style. For me experimentation has been the best part of working digitally. With watercolor, I was always playing it safe, particularly with colors, because one wrong brush stroke could ruin hours of work. However, in Photoshop, I am able to try out colors, lighting and textures on separate layers without risking losing hours of work. By having the freedom to explore, I have been able to diversify my colors, create more engaging compositions, and add scanned textures and patterns. I also found myself eventually gravitating towards more textured brushes, giving some areas of my artwork the look of chalk pastels rather than paint. This enabled me to achieve color layering and depth that I was unable to achieve through traditional means. Once I let go and stopped trying to get my new medium to behave like watercolor, I became open to using new color application techniques that eventually took my artwork to a more satisfying place. The image below shows one of my last watercolor images, my first successful digital illustration, and my current digital style.

I hope all artists who are thinking about making the switch to digital enjoy the process of learning a new medium and seeing where it takes their artwork! Happy illustrating!

About the author

Jennifer Zivoin has always loved art and storytelling, so becoming a children's book illustrator was a natural career path. Most of her illustrations are painted digitally, though she draws inspiration from traditional media. In addition to artwork, Jennifer enjoys reading, cooking, and ballroom dancing - especially tango! She lives in Indiana with her husband and daughter.

Did you know Adobe makes a program that lets you make your own custom panels/palettes for Photoshop and in design? Well not many people do, so lets talk a little bit about Adobe Configurator. Adobe Labs offers the free utility for Mac or PC and give it a try, but if you’d like to learn more continue reading.

If you want to make a panel with all your favorite drawing tools like the brush tool, gradient tool, smudge tool, eyedropper tool and, a few of your favorite actions you totally can with absolutely no knowledge of coding. The above image was created in about five minutes and has all the Photoshop tools and commands I frequently use. It was super easy to create a custom panel and export to Photoshop CS6 or Creative Cloud (InDesign only supports CS6). Configurator made it easy to drag and drop tools, menu items, scripts, actions and other objects you might want quick access to in your own panel design.

How do you make your own panels/palettes? Honestly I’m still learning the software myself so I thought I would share a YouTube video from people with a bit more knowledge then I. The video below is from the previous version of Configurator but I think the fundamentals are the same.

About the author

Having grown up on the shores of Maui, Hawaii, Norm has always had a love for drawing. Since leaving the Islands’ beautiful beaches and landing in Oregon he went to college and received a degree in graphic design. Now living in Beaverton, Oregon, Norm has been working as a full-time graphic designer and illustrator for the last 12 years. He has spent countless hours perfecting his craft as a freelance illustrator working on several children’s books, a few video games and creating numerous educational products. His ability to draw has given him the chance to do the thing he truly loves — Create.

For the Fourth of July I thought it would be fun to show you how to create some fireworks in Photoshop. There’s a ton of different ways to make fireworks but here’s a few tricks and filters you can use to create some quick digital fireworks. Watch the above video for the entire process of how I created the fireworks you see below. Have a happy and safe Fourth.

About the author

Having grown up on the shores of Maui, Hawaii, Norm has always had a love for drawing. Since leaving the Islands’ beautiful beaches and landing in Oregon he went to college and received a degree in graphic design. Now living in Beaverton, Oregon, Norm has been working as a full-time graphic designer and illustrator for the last 12 years. He has spent countless hours perfecting his craft as a freelance illustrator working on several children’s books, a few video games and creating numerous educational products. His ability to draw has given him the chance to do the thing he truly loves — Create.

In an earlier post Once Upon A Sketch addressed the subject of being asked to work on spec for a prospective client. Generally defined as creating a sample specifically for an upcoming project, spec (short for speculative) work is often requested by individuals unfamiliar with the industry, impatient to get their book ‘on the market’, and often not offering any payment to the illustrator. An increasing trend among traditional trade publishers is the process of sampling illustrations. It works like this: an illustrator will get an email from the editor or art director who is late in the process of assigning an illustrator to a manuscript. They will inquire about availability to do the book and ask if the artist is open to creating one or two character samples. They will inform the artist that other illustrators are being considered. While this sounds similar to spec work, I would argue that sampling for a major publisher is not the same as working on spec for a novice or self publishing client.

Here’s how they differ:

• Unlike spec work there is often a small fee paid to the artist. But even in the cases where that is not offered, art director Giuseppe Castellano argues in his #arttips thread on Twitter that illustrators should always take it seriously and return a sample. At the very least the illustrator’s work will be viewed by an art director and the illustrator should get a great portfolio piece out of the process.

• While the novice client really has no idea how to view a portfolio and decide if the style presented is appropriate, the trade art director has already vetted the artist’s portfolio and has two or three illustrators that the editorial team just can’t decide between. Particularly in the case of high profile author or celebrity books, editorial needs to know how easy the illustrator is to work with and how sales thinks the art will help position the book.

• The traditional publishing house has other projects in the pipeline. The novice client or self publisher likely has only one. Working on spec has little return on the time invested simply because there’s just not another job to be hired for. Even if you are not chosen during the sampling process with a traditional publisher, your chances of being called on again are greatly increased.

When choosing to be part of the sample process here are some tips an illustrator should keep in mind:

• First of all, if it’s a publisher you’ve never heard of then it’s probably spec work… not a sample. Don’t do it unless you are paid.

• It’s perfectly ok to ask how many other illustrators are being considered and when the publisher expects to make the decision. I’ve even asked the editor to tell me how many people will have to approve the sample.

• If you can’t do a good sample by the time requested, offer something different. Generally an illustrator will be asked for only one color sample of a character but i’ve been asked for spreads as well. In that case I asked if I could do a color character and just a sketch of the spread.

• Even if the art director does not request samples by a certain time, set your own (relatively quick) deadline and then beat it. It’s always nice to show that you are disciplined about meeting a project’s timeline.

• No matter what, go above and beyond in the work you create. After months or years of sending postcards to this publisher you got a call. Now’s your chance to shine.

I’ve sampled for a small number of publishers. In all cases I felt like I was opening a line of communication with a potential client that I had previously only been able to reach through mailings. Even on the projects I wasn’t chosen for, the art directors were enthusiastic about my work and the samples created have gotten me other projects. As Castellano’s #arttips suggest, doing exemplary work for a sample is a small investment of time that can pay big dividends in the future by making a good impression on art directors that are on the lookout for the next great illustrator.

Thanks for checking back for the second part of this two part post about how I created the Magical World of Sebella: Legend of Halloween book cover. In part one we discussed how I started this project learning the clients expectations and how the client suggested scenes from the book that might make good imagery for the cover. Next, based off these discussions how I design characters to fit into this magical world. Finishing up last weeks post with talking about how I created a final Black and white line drawing, got it approved, and ready to be colored. This week I’m going to show you the process I used for coloring the entire image and how I finished the project up by laying the cover out in InDesign. If you’d like to read part one you can find it here.

For my coloring process I screen recorded the entire session of me painting the cover. This process was over several days and the video is sped up quite a bit. I think it took me about 10 hours to paint the cover and the full-length of the video is about nine minutes. I hope you enjoy zooming through 10 hours of my life.

When coloring I normally use five or six different tools: brush, eraser, gradient, smudge, lasso selection, and the magic wand tool. In this case I took my color rough and snapped it to the right side of my Photoshop layout, just for reference as I’m adding color. In this illustration’s case the first thing I started with was a gradient just to establish a base color. From there I roughed in some of the background elements. Once I was happy with the rough background I began adding a base color for the characters. For me, it’s easiest if I use the brush tool and establish the outline of the area I’m trying to fill and making sure there are no open areas. Using the magic wand tool I select the inside of the area. Once that selection has been established I expanded anywhere from two pixels to six pixels out as to avoid the nasty pixel ring that can be left behind if you don’t expand your selection. To do this quickly I create an action in Photoshop that expands my selection two pixels out. Once the flat colors are laid down for all the characters, I begin establishing some quick shadows on the characters using the gradient tool. I know a lot of artists don’t like to use the gradient tool, they say it makes it feel more computer-generated and for the most part I agree. Since this is just the base and I’ll come back painting over these areas later, I don’t have a problem starting with the gradient tool. It just helps me define shapes. Now I’m going in and adding a few lines to faces and areas so I won’t need to use my sketch layer anymore. I never delete the sketch layer until the end because I will refer back to it several times.

At this point (2:00 minutes in) in the drawing I’m looking at it and not really enjoying the way the characters are turning out. There’s a lot of things that I could nitpick about it but instead of scrapping the entire picture I decide to focus on the background. Hiding the characters layer I find myself enjoying the task of painting the background and it really energizes me for the rest of the image. Sometimes I find myself worrying about silly things like the way layers are organized and making sure I use selections so that I don’t paint outside defined shapes. When I feel this way I normally do the scariest thing I can, which is flatten the image. It helps me let go of all that silly stuff and just paint.

Once again happy with the background, I turn my attention back to the characters. When I find myself unhappy with a part of the painting it’s nice to focus on something else and come back later to the problem areas. Just don’t wait too long. Remembering to flip the canvas horizontally helps me see the problem areas of the image. By flipping the canvas you can see the image in a whole new light. Sometimes I’m staring at a drawing for too long and I start to gloss over the mistakes I’ve made. In this case a characters eye was to low on his face and when I flipped the canvas I was able to correct this mistake (3:30; it goes by really quick). I continued to add details where needed. I added some needed color to the sky and bats flying in the background. Now back to refining the characters. I start adding darker shadows and highlights of the edges of characters to help better define the light sources. Finally, I add details, details, and more details. My last few steps are to add some missing pieces of candy (7:45). A color adjustment layer and a dark blue gradient from the top of the image to help sell the idea of night. It also helps the title pop off the page a bit more.

Once again I send this image to the client and her only change is to make the text “The Legend of Halloween” a different color.

Now that the cover is approved it’s time for me to lay out the artwork in Adobe Indesign. With this cover there was also a design element which was designing the back cover and spine of the book. The author had already sent me the text for the back, so it was really just a matter of defining the colors, coming up with some decorative elements, adding the UPC code area and applying some of the design elements from the back cover to the spine.

I hope you enjoyed my process for creating this cover. It was well worth it and I really enjoyed creating it. I really appreciate Thea Berg allowing me to share all of this with you. If you have any questions about this process please leave them in the comments below and I’ll be sure to answer them.

About the author

Having grown up on the shores of Maui, Hawaii, Norm has always had a love for drawing. Since leaving the Islands’ beautiful beaches and landing in Oregon he went to college and received a degree in graphic design. Now living in Beaverton, Oregon, Norm has been working as a full-time graphic designer and illustrator for the last 12 years. He has spent countless hours perfecting his craft as a freelance illustrator working on several children’s books, a few video games and creating numerous educational products. His ability to draw has given him the chance to do the thing he truly loves — Create.

Remember that one book with the kid with the hair and the shorts and the solid colored shirt and a smiling face? Yeah, me neither. Think of your favorite children’s picture books. For me, books like “Olivia”, “Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon”, and “Knuffle Bunny” come to mind. Chances are, you can picture your favorite characters from your favorite picture books clearly, and they can’t be mistake with any other character from any other book. They are unique, 3-dimentional people with personalities that are expressed through the text and the images. As illustrators, we have the job of creating characters that are as one-of-a-kind as real people that we might meet in real life. To fully realize a character, it is important to visualize and link the person and the environment.

The Character:

After reading the manuscript and description, try to envision everything about your character. How tall is he/she? What sort of build? How about facial expressions? How does he/she wear he/her hair? What sorts of clothes would he/she prefer to buy on a shopping trip? Does your character have a hobby, quirk, or particular interest? If the manuscript does not specify, take artistic liberties and fill in the gaps! For example, for one of my recent books “Riley Mae and the Rock Shocker Trek”, I was given a manuscript about a Riley, an athletic girl who becomes the spokesperson for a line of girls’ shoes, and who goes by the name “Riley Mae” so that people will know she is a girl. This told me that while Riley was sporty, she was not defined by the “tomboy” stereotype. (By the way, I HATE the word “tomboy” and all that it implies…..ok moving on.) She is in touch with her femininity, and has an interest in fashion. So, when it came time to design her character, I thought about how Riley would want to look. Her hair would be pulled back in a pony tale, but have you ever seen an active athletic girl with permanently perfect hair? So, I gave her a few front pieces that never quite stay in place. So she holds those stray hairs back with a decorative clip (a different one for each book). She has freckles from being outside in the sun. Also, when she chooses her outfits, I figured that Riley would want to keep thing comfortable, but with a little embellishment, just like her hair. As for the shoes, Riley goes all out. They are sporty, fashionable, fun and girly, and full of details.

I also wanted to make sure that she had a least one quirky facial feature. You know how when babies are born, everyone says “Oh, she has Aunt Kathryn’s nose” or “Oh, those are daddy’s eyes!”? Making sure that your character has deliberately designed, not generic, facial features helps to keep your character reading as an individual, real person. For Riley, I gave her a dimple on just one side of her mouth, a cute rounded nose and a heart shaped face.

The Environment:

You can really tell a lot about a person by walking into their house. How a person decorates, cleans (or not) and keeps their personal space says something about their personality and priorities. For our characters, there are lots of opportunities to visual express who they are as people by remembering that the environment’s design is really a part of the character design. There are lots of places where we might use the setting to add little touches that support and flesh out the character. Bedrooms. Closets. Lockers. Refrigerator doors. School cubbies. Backpacks. Real kids decorate their rooms, scribble on their notebook covers, tape up photographs, draw pictures, display keepsakes and personalize their space. Our characters should do so as well. We can also make our characters more interesting by breaking stereotypes. Not every girl loves pink and princesses. Not every boy loves sports. Why not have a girl’s room decorated with a dinosaur theme? A boy’s backpack with a space ship doodled on it with permanent marker? Maybe your character is interested in trains, or nature, or is obsessed with a particular animal, or has a favorite color. Few kids have only one interest. Having a setting with little details that express your character’s hobbies and passions, even if they are not mentioned in the story, makes your image feel more real and unique, and builds up the world in which your character lives and moves.

Keeping it Real:

Coming up with current outfits, accessories, unique props and fun environments takes time and research, and tight deadlines and project juggling can make it difficult to be creative within a time-crunch. One solution that has worked for me is keeping a digital archive of inspiration on Pinterest. Every week, I make some time to surf the web looking for bedding, curtains, lamps, clothing, and gathering them together in my digital artist reference archive. This way, when I need inspiration for a trendy teen character, or a little boy’s bedroom, I have references at my fingertips. This also allows me to keep my references current, so that my outfits and props don’t look dated. I am sure other artists have other tricks for gathering and keeping track of references as well.

The more unique we make our characters, the more we as readers can relate to them, because they resonate as actual people with quirks, interests and personalities, not as characters just demonstrating an action from the text. Thanks for reading, and have fun looking for interesting props, patterns and people to inspire your next piece!

In this post I’m going to walk you through my process for creating a book cover. A self-publishing author, Thea Berg, approached me to do a cover in her book series The Magical World of Sebella. The first book cover was illustrated by Wilson Williams, Jr. who sadly passed away last year. So I thought it was very nice of the author to think of me to do the second book’s cover. Wilson was a good friend and I was honored that I could continue the work he had started with the first cover.

I’m going to breakdown my entire process for creating the second book cover in the series The Magical World of Sebella book 2: The Legend of Halloween. I’ll show you the character designs, the cover sketches, color comps, my coloring process and finally how I laid the book out in Adobe Indesign. With all that being in this post, it’s going to be a little bit longer than normal so it may end up being broken into two parts. Let’s get started.

My process begins with talking to the client. In this case it was a few emails and a phone conversation. During these conversations we discussed her characters, who her target audience is, and the story. I wasn’t able to read through the entire book’s script so she sent me over chunks of the book that she thought would make the best imagery. In our conversations we kept coming back to this same scene, in which the characters are entering a magical candy garden. This ended up being the area we chose for the illustration to take place in. With all of that out of the way I was able to start drawing. First, I looked at the first book’s cover and the look of the characters that were established in the cover. With this book taking place on Halloween we knew that these characters would need completely new outfits. The first thing I wanted to do was establish the characters’ costumes. We had already discussed what costumes the characters would wear: witch, cowgirl, Princess, and ninja costumes. When I’m designing characters I usually start off with a silhouette of the character but since a majority of that was already established from the first cover I was really able to focus solely on the characters’ outfits. I started with really rough sketches and then continued to refine. By dropping the opacity of the layer of my last rough sketch, creating a new layer and continuing to draw over the top of the last sketch, I refined the image until I came up with an image that I’m happy with. Once I created a sketch I enjoyed, I darkened the line work and added some color. Then I sent the designs over to the client for approval. The sketches were approved rather easily with one minor change; the witch character looked a little old. I reworked the image and was on to the next step of rough sketches for the cover. Continue reading

Congrats! You have been published! Your book is being carried in bookstores, and your local store has agreed to host a book signing event for you! Every author and illustrator has their unique way of presenting at events, but here are some tips, tricks and ideas to help make your next book signing a success for you and the kids…..so that hopefully the bookstores will want you back!

Publicize Your Event

Get the word out! Nothing feels worse than having a poor turn-out for your event. Make fliers to distribute to local schools’ a week or so in advance so that kids can bring the information home to their parents. It might help to provide schools a copy of your book along with that big stack of fliers. Contact your local newspaper at least a month ahead of time to see if they can do an article to feature your book and to promote your event. Make a Facebook sticker/image to promote your signing, post it on your timeline, and ask your family and friends to share it on their own pages. Make sure all of your friends and their kids know about the signing, and encourage them to come. Crowds draw crowds!

Bring Props

Is your book about pirates? Where a pirate hat! Does your book take place at the beach? Wear a Hawaiian shirt, sun hat and pass out cheap sunglasses to the first 20 kids! Creating a little atmosphere can generate excitement about your book. At a recent book signing for “The Summer Fairy”, the author Elizabeth Gillihan brought a vase of flowers (she let the kids be “helpers” and put the flowers in the vase), balloons and sat on a stool decorated like a toadstool while she read the story to the children. She also passed out pixie sticks to all of the children who attended the story-time portion of the signing.

Kristi Valiant, author and illustrator of “Penguin Cha Cha”, had these fun cardboard cut-outs made for her book signings.

Engage For Every Age

There will probably be a wide age range at your event, from parents to preschoolers. Remember, bored children are unhappy, restless, disruptive children. If you are doing an illustration demo, be aware that not ever child may be old enough or able to follow along, and not every kid likes to draw. Having coloring pages available can help those children be engaged even if they don’t feel up to drawing along with the group. An easy way to do this is to print out the sketches of pages from your book, pass them out and have a basket of crayons available. Also, encourage your audience to participate by asking them questions that you know will receive positive answers. If your book is about summer, ask the kids “Who going camping this summer?” or “Who likes swimming?!” Use questions as ways to help your audience connect to some aspect of your book.

In this video we have a quick tip for you about using the free transform tool in Adobe Illustrator. The free transform tool isn’t as easy-to-use as you might think. There’s a trick to get images to distort, if you don’t know the trick the free transform tool behaves very differently.

About the author

Having grown up on the shores of Maui, Hawaii, Norm has always had a love for drawing. Since leaving the Islands’ beautiful beaches and landing in Oregon he went to college and received a degree in graphic design. Now living in Beaverton, Oregon, Norm has been working as a full-time graphic designer and illustrator for the last 12 years. He has spent countless hours perfecting his craft as a freelance illustrator working on several children’s books, a few video games and creating numerous educational products. His ability to draw has given him the chance to do the thing he truly loves — Create.

Today we have two videos by Illustrator Lynne Chapman. In the first YouTube video Lynne explains how she Illustrates a picture book. Lynne gives insight into how she plans her illustrations with thumbnails sketches and also how she designs the pages in her book Jungle Grumble. Learn how she turns a page of emailed text from the publisher into line drawings. She also talks about the things she requests from the publisher before beginning her process.

In video two she explains how she creates different personalities for her animal characters and how she brings them to life. She explains how she uses photo reference to help her identify key features like making minor adjustments to the eyes to change the characters feel. She also talks about how she may have to draw the character over and over until she gets it right, I’m glad award-winning illustrators have to do that too. I thought I was the only one.

If you’d like to learn more about Lynne Chapman’s work you can check out her website or blog where she shares much more of her wonderful knowledge.

About the author

Having grown up on the shores of Maui, Hawaii, Norm has always had a love for drawing. Since leaving the Islands’ beautiful beaches and landing in Oregon he went to college and received a degree in graphic design. Now living in Beaverton, Oregon, Norm has been working as a full-time graphic designer and illustrator for the last 12 years. He has spent countless hours perfecting his craft as a freelance illustrator working on several children’s books, a few video games and creating numerous educational products. His ability to draw has given him the chance to do the thing he truly loves — Create.

About

Once upon a sketch was founded to give insight, education and news about the many facets of the Children’s Illustration Market. From Children’s Books to Character Design, Game Art, Storyboarding, Toys and licensed Products you’ll find articles, interviews and resources to help fuel your education and growth. Jump in and learn more about the various industries from working professionals and find out what it takes to become successful in this field.